Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #129: The KEY To Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess with Dr. Caroline Leaf

Episode Date: July 13, 2021

Who hasn’t dealt with anxiety and depression, especially after this pandemic!? But what do we do about it? Thankfully, I have the incredible communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist, Dr. Caroline Leaf, with us to share her 5 step process to managing our MINDS. She is here to shift the narrative about mental health and encourage us to put a stop to the shame-spiral once and for all. Let’s get the tools we need, stop repressing, start self-regulating, and clean up our mental mess!    About The Guest: Dr. Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist with a Masters and PhD in Communication Pathology and a BSc Logopaedics, specializing in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology. Since the early 1980s she has researched the mind-brain connection, the nature of mental health, and the formation of memory. She was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change (neuroplasticity) with directed mind input.    During her years in clinical practice and her work with thousands of underprivileged teachers and students in her home country of South Africa and in the USA, she developed her theory (called the Geodesic Information Processing theory) of how we think, build memory, and learn, into tools and processes that have transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), learning disabilities (ADD, ADHD), autism, dementias and mental ill-health issues like anxiety and depression. She has helped hundreds of thousands of students and adults learn how to use their mind to detox and grow their brain to succeed in every area of their lives, including school, university, and the workplace.   Finding Dr. Caroline Leaf: Website: https://drleaf.com/  Read Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess: 5 Simple, Scientifically Proven Steps to Reduce Anxiety, Stress, and Toxic Thinking Listen to her podcast: CLEANING UP THE MENTAL MESS with Dr. Caroline Leaf Twitter & Instagram: @drcarolineleaf Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DrCarolineLeaf   Review this podcast on Apple Podcast using this LINK and when you DM me the screen shot, I buy you my $299 video course as a thank you!    To pre-order Overcome Your Villains NOW and get the bonus bundle click here: https://overcomeyourvillains.com     See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

People get told they've depressed because they've got imbalanced neurochemicals. There's not even science behind that. And then they get told they're getting given a medication that's going to rebalance the chemicals. It's not doing that. That medication is psychoactive. So it numbs the brain. So you may have temporary relief. But it doesn't fix what's going on.

It doesn't fix the adverse. It doesn't make the financial problem in COVID go away. It doesn't make the death of a loved one go away. You still got to process that. You can't get away from it. It's terrible, but you have to go through those things. the only way out is through. I'm on this journey with me.

Each week when you join me, you're going to chase down our goals. We'll overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. That's a no senior. I'm ready for my closer. Well, welcome back. I'm so excited for you to meet my guest today. Dr. Caroline Leif.

She's a communication pathologist, cognitive neuroscientist, with a master's and PhD in communication pathology and a BSC logo paid. from the University of Cape Town and the University of Pretoria in South Africa, specializing in cognitive and medicognitive neuropsychology. Since the early 80s, she has researched the mid-brain connection, the nature of mental health, and the formation of memory.

She was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change neuroplasticity with directed mind input. Dr. Leif, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you, Heather. It's so lovely to see you again. It's so lovely to see you. When I first met you at the virtual women's event that we did together a few months back, I pre-ordered your book that day. I was so excited about it's so amazing. Thank you. I'm so honored, really. Thank you so much. Your book couldn't be coming out at a more fantastic time with anxiety and depression off of the charts for everyone and anyone. And I was reading

some of the stats that your five-step process can potentially get rid of 81% of anxiety and depression? Yes, so basically it's a system that I've developed over 38 years from it on a very, initially as a very heavy sort of therapeutic tool for people with severe trauma and severe brain injuries and learning disabilities and autism. And then from there, I adapted and continually researched over the years and made it simple. So these different applications. And this book's got the most simple version which anyone can use. And I showed that basically if you manage your mind through the system, you can control anxiety and depression by 81% and more.

And I mean, just 10% control of anxiety and depression, you'll feel like a new person. So just to know you have that level of autonomy is just incredible. So we're very excited about that. Oh my gosh. It's unbelievable the results you have. And one of the things that I like about your book is that not only do you include the research, obviously, and lots of graphics, images and whatnot to really highlight

what's happening. But you share personal stories of your patients, which I think is so cool and relatable. Yes. I think that's important that people can see this as actually real people, that, you know, that, I mean, we reach so many around the world now, but when you do clinical case studies and clinical trials, it's really, it's amazing to see the difference. And in this particular trial, we had people, it was all very statistic. It was gold standard, statistically driven gold standard random control trials so that the golden sort of the best way that you can do them and i say that to say that everyone came into the trial in the control and experimental group in a really bad place and really battling like emotions off the chart anxiety depression labels

battling with just everything that you can imagine in the experimental group within three weeks we saw massive changes and within nine weeks we saw behavioral changes and those numbers are significant because it takes about three weeks for you to actually identify the cause of why you feel anxious or depressed or what's going on. You know, why are you feeling like this? Because anxiety and depression aren't illnesses, which is what we've been told. And that's the wrong narrative. And that's caused a lot of the problems that we've seen today, this incorrect narrative.

Anxiety and depression aren't it. They're not like cancer or diabetes. They are emotional responses like fear or frustration or irritation or guilt. They're just a different type of emotional response, which is actually a warning signal. telling you that, okay, I'm showing up like this, something's going on. So what we saw in the clinical trial was that people were showing up at the beginning of the clinical trial with all these things going on and all these emotions dominating. And they were saying things about themselves like, I am anxiety.

I am clinically depressed. That was their identity. Their narratives were so interesting because they were all around what they couldn't do and the lack of hope and what was going wrong. But they didn't know why. So it was all very focused on the external, life just falling apart. By 21 days in the experimental group,

they were saying things like, I'm not clinical depression. I'm not in it. I am depressed because of. This is why I'm feeling like this. There's a reason. So the guilt and the shame and the condemnation and the stigma

and the why aren't I better and all those negative things had changed, which is phenomenal. By 63 days, which is the time that it takes to actually change a behavior. Time takes to build their habits. It doesn't happen in 21st.

days, which is actually a myth. By 63 days, we saw actual changes in their life. So day one, the identity was depression. They were hopeless, felt hopeless. By day 21, they weren't depression. They were saying, I am depressed because of. By day 63, there was behavior change. So the relationships were back online. They were back at work. They were sleeping. They were functioning and they weren't frightened of depression anymore. And it wasn't like, you're never going to have depression again. Depression is not a thing that you can, that you're going to get and catch like a virus. Depression is simply responses to adverse circumstances. So for example, now during COVID, I mean, the pandemic, people have lost loved ones, they've lost finances and all

that kind of stuff. Obviously, you're going to be depressed and anxious and worried. Doesn't mean you have a brain disease. It means you've been exposed to a virus that's changed your life and it's an adverse circumstance and you're being a human responding to an adverse circumstance. And that's the narrative I'm trying to bring through in the book cleaning up your mental mess is that you're human and being a human, you're going to experience anxiety and depression. And all manner of mental mess, obviously, along the scale, different extent for certain people. And obviously, there's a continuum.

But that's human. If you're human, you're alive, you are going to, life's challenging. And why we look at this thing is, oh, one in four, got depression, and one in five have got anxiety, and it's on the increase. It's not on the increase. It's not one in four that have got depression. It's 100% of people have got depression. 100% of people are anxious.

You've got to stop these scary numbers that are actually wrong. The numbers are bigger than what they're saying because it's normal. So it's like if you think that you sort of look at the paradox. They say, what in four? That's so bad and it's increasing. No, I said, no, no, 100% which normalizes it. We're human. We're going to battle.

Some days we up, some days we're down. We have this experience. We have that experience and it throws us when we respond. And what we've got to do is embrace those responses for what they are. no one just shows up with no reason why you show up like that. You know, you show up at work depressed or you wake up and you have a lot of stuff going on in the previous few days and you wake up not feeling full of energy like you normally do and feeling sad.

You don't have a brain disease. You're just being a human responding and processing life. And until we shift that narrative, we've got a massive problem. And we've had this narrative of it being a brain disease, any emotional experience, for around 40 years now. And I've watched over the trajectory of my career. because I've been in this world now for 38 years, which is a long time, practice clinically for 25 and I've done research for 38.

I still do 38 years. I still do clinical trials. And I've watched this trajectory and it's really concerned me. And fortunately, at the same time as a lot of us scientists watching this, there was a massive study done. And federal data demonstrated from this massive study that because of this narrative of not looking at humans, but reducing everything down to their brain and the body and the neurobiased, biology, everything's in your hiding in your brain, waiting to sort of jump out and, you know, get you.

So if you're depressed, there's something wrong with your brain. If you anxious, there's something wrong with your brain. If you sat for longer than three days, there's something wrong with your brain. Meanwhile, it's just you in life. And that narrative has grown over the last 40 years as we've discovered more about medicine and the brain. And that's great that we've discovered more about medicine and the brain. You want to, you want to improve in neuroscience and medicine and technology.

But not at the cost of humanity, of being human, of the narrative. And so we've shifted from this what's going on in your life and you're showing up like this, there's a reason to, oh, what are your symptoms? Let's give you a diagnosis. Let's give you medication. Let's numb the pain. And then people get told they've depressed because they've got imbalanced neurochemicals. There's not even science behind that. And then they get told they're getting given a medication that's going to rebalance the chemicals.

It's not doing that. That medication is psychoactive. So it numbs the brain. So you may have temporary release. but it doesn't fix what's going on. It doesn't fix the adverse. It doesn't make the financial problem in COVID go away. It doesn't make the death of a loved one go away.

You still got to process that. You can't get away from it. It's terrible, but you have to go through those things. The only way out is through. So until we shift the narrative, we're going to land up with what we did land up with, but 40 years of doing this, just before COVID hit, federal data was released. The data was released.

It was from 1996 to 20, 2014. team that's long study showing that, trying to find out what was going on. And they found that with all the advances in medicine and technology, instead of people living longer, they're dying like 8 to 25 years younger. So how does that happen? Medicine's advancing. Technology is advancing. Neuroscience is advancing.

Research is advancing. But we're going backwards with people dying younger for the first time in decades. And the age group being most affected are 25 to 64 year olds. So those are people in the prime of their work career. young parents. So kids are losing parents. Here, the workforce is losing like their workers in their prime. And they call them deaths of despair. And when they said, okay, well, why is this happening? They said it's from preventable lifestyle issues, preventable. So here we are in this advanced age and people are dying when it could be prevented. So it comes back to how do you

prevent a lifestyle issue? Well, it's how you're managing your life, how you're managing your mind. So it comes all the way back full circle to who are we and what is my? And what is mind and where do we begin this thing? Where do we begin preventing this? So it begins in our mind. And for the last 40 years, we've focused so much on the biology that we've forgotten about the humanity, which is our aliveness, which is our mind, which is the difference between you and I being alive and the viewers being alive and a dead person. Dead person doesn't have a mind active. So the difference between a dead person and you and I and the viewers is mind. Mind is your aliveness. And if you squash mind into a biological concept, that's not all it is. That's

only part of what mind is. It uses the biology. Mind has got another whole aspect to it. But if you ignore that, you ignore our humanity. And that's what has been happening. And we're paying the price. They're calling a death of despair, which is very appropriate because people are literally dying from not being able to process. I mean, our kids, Gen Z, millennials and Gen Z are suffering, especially Gen Z are the first generation to come through completely drugged. It's the first generation that's so drugged. In other words, they're medicated for everything. 20 years ago, I could give 15 years ago, 10 years ago, I could give a lecture at a school about emotions and feelings and trauma. And they would all understand that that comes from

something. You've experienced something and that you need to process that and you need to talk about it and get therapy and connect with others. Now you go do that lecture. They'll say, what's my diagnosis and what drug do I need? You know, so that's the shift that's happened and that shift is not not healthy. And now we hit COVID with that. Now we get COVID. So now there's an increase in isolation and all these things and loss, which obviously is going to throw people's mental health out for a loop because it's

an adverse circumstance. So now instead of them saying, oh gosh, we've got this whole pattern already hit prior to COVID and now we've got this happening, instead of saying that and saying, how are we going to address this as a community, how are we going to help people process this? They say, oh, we've got to increase screening and diagnosis and treatment, which is label, drug, and basically if you're lucky, get a bit of therapy. And that's not going to solve the problem. It's going to make it 10 times worse.

Just today I was interviewing a psychiatrist myself and who doesn't really, they use more nutrition. And they were saying that by the middle of, I didn't know this, by June last year, they'd already run out of one of the types of antidepressant. That's how much demand there was. That's not the way to help people manage a crisis. But that's what the world's come to. You have a crisis, you drug people.

You give them a quick fix. And you forget all about the fact that we need to cry. We need to scream. We need to get frustrated. We need to actually say, this is not good enough. We need systemic change. We need to change racism. We need to change the systems that are keeping racism in place.

We need to change the systems that are not allowing my child to process something that they're going through at school. We've got to allow these leaders that are running corporations and leading people to actually express how they feel and not penalize them. And because you expressed that you got depression, in the workforce, you're going to lose your job or you're going to get labeled as a crazy person. One doctor a day is committing suicide

from pressure and depression of actually going through what they're going through. So, I mean, the system is crazy. Three percent of leaders are only talking about mental health. Meanwhile, every human, if you're a human, you have mental health issues.

That's just how it works. So that's what we've got to watch for. I mean, I've said a lot. It's a long answer. But it kind of paints the picture that we need a new narrative. And that's why I wrote this book is to say, hey, listen, guys,

you're brilliant. you human, it's okay to feel a mess. Humans are messes. We messes all the time and that is okay. What we've got to do is manage it. We've got to manage our mental mess. I thought it's high time. We actually put tools into people's hands to understand what my mental health really

is and what can I do with myself. You may be going to therapy once or twice a week, which is fantastic. This is not replacing therapy. This enhances therapy. But what do you do with yourself the other 24 hours, seven days a week, six days a week or whatever? You've got to live with your mind never leaves you. your aliveness never leaves you until you dead. So you've got to live with your aliveness, how are you managing that?

And that's the issue. That's why people are dying younger. They're not managing being alive in a very effective way. And it's quite radical to think of it like this. But it's basically the research shows that we have to, and it's logic, we don't even need to research. We do. If you just think about your gut instinct, it is, I need to share. I need to be with someone.

And then last thing I'll just say about this is let's say that you have a dinner party and a whole group of you get together, you have a business function or something, and you arrive at that business function and you say, oh, hi, everyone, I've just come from the psychiatrist and I've just been given a neuropsychiatric brain disease and put on four medications and I've got to have this the rest of my life. Everyone's going to look at you and treat you differently. But if you had scenario number two, same person, same dinner party, same business meeting, same group of people, and you say, hi, everyone, oh gosh, I had such a week.

This has happened and that happened and that happened and that happened and this happened in the business. and then I had this flashback and that really made me feel so traumatized and I had such a few days of depression. Everyone will lean in and say, I get it. I'm so sorry. How can I help you? What can I do for you? Yeah, I had that.

I feel the same. You'll have community. You'll have connection. That's the correct way of helping people to process, not, you know, like give a label and put it in a box and I hope it's going to go away. It doesn't. So we've got to shift. How are we managing our lives?

Long answer. That's massive work to be done. It's interesting because I've never been diagnosed with anxiety or depression. However, in the pandemic, you know, a month in, I remember thinking, I need to start calling someone to, I think I have one or both or I don't know, but immediately it went to. Does that mean I need medication? That's the first thing I thought about because that's what we're conditioned to know. And as same as parents, you wouldn't want to withhold something if you thought that was a doctor's telling you,

that's the right thing for your child. That's the messaging. Thank you for saying that. That is the messaging that the public have been given. Do you know that I've trained thousands of physicians in my career. And physicians, and I've done part of my degree was in med school. So we had to do a certain amount of time there. And most of my friends are in the medical field.

Doctors do not get training in mind. They've not trained in mind. They trained in biology, which is what they should be. It's a very specialized field. You need mind specialists for mind and you need to have, but you do need the crossover. But who do you go to if you feel sick? your primary care physician, who then, who then 95% of prescriptions

come antipsychotics and antidepressants and so on, come from your primary care physician. They've had no training in that. They've just given the basic thing of depression is a neuropsychiatric brain disease. These are the symptoms. These are the medications. It's the chemical imbalance. And even though that's been

disproved, it's been like the top medical schools, the top psychiatrists, the top leading scientists, so you don't even say that to people. It's still being said to the public. It's still the messaging. And look at, look at that. You really feel awful in the pandemic because it's like so isolated and all these scary things. And now you're having a normal reaction, but you immediately thought there was something else wrong with you. Now you're thinking, oh gosh,

I've got to deal with the pandemic and the finances and whatever, and I've got a brain disease. That's just terrible. That's so hopeless. So that's why I do the work I do. My wrote this book is to try and bring that research into people's hands in as accessible ways I can to say, hey, listen, there really isn't anything wrong with you. You're being human. You're showing up like that because of something. You didn't just show up because there's something wrong with your brain. You showed up in that way because you've experienced something in life that's being traumatic or adverse.

And you are responding in the best way that you can. How do you deal with it? You don't want to stay there. It's not sustainable because it creates a toxic thought in the brain and thoughts look like trees. So there's a toxic thought. And there's a healthy thought. I always use these little analogies. So literally every experience becomes a thought.

in the brain and it becomes a thought in the mind and we can talk about that in the moment. You want to know if you if you are showing up with a lot of depression or anxiety, there's a reason. So you need to be a thought detective and actually go and find a way of fully understanding it and then reconceptualizing it into something that you can manage that works for you. So you don't throw your story out because it's part of your story. If you look deeply into the trees here, you'll see these light branches and dark branches. The dark branches would be how you want to manage the situation and the life branches are what you're managing. It's the story. It's the abuse. It's the loss. It's the financial loss. It's the trauma, whatever that is.

It's still part of your story. But how you're managing it. That's the key. And that's what research shows is what we designed to do. We actually are able to, when these manage, even if it's messy, I mean, it's messy. It takes time. But the management leads you to a place where you can cope, where you can actually deal with that stuff. where you can, and the next thing that hits you, you've got more resilient. So each time you get more self-regulated with mind management, you have the next crisis or the next whatever. And this not always just big crises, but there's the little ones that happen every day, the little mini-traumers, you know, getting into an argument with a loved one,

or having an issue with your kids at school, or your kids have a fight with their friends, and they totally traumatized, and you've got to help them through it. Or, you know, you have a business meeting and your colleagues do some really stupid thing, or someone does something that's just crazy for the business. Those are all mini-traumers. How are we managing those? We're getting worked up.

We're getting frustrated. We're being reactive. That's not healthy. That's just, and then that cumulatively will increase feelings of anxiety and feelings of depression. But if you manage it, then you don't get scared of it because those feelings really made the public has been made to be scared and fearful of the words anxiety and depression. As fearful as people are of cancer, they've become as fearful.

I tell people love the depression and love the depression and love the anxiety. Why? Because as soon as you embrace it, you control it. The more fear you have, the more controls you, because it's not an it. It's just a response. So you embrace it to find out and love it because there's a message in that. It doesn't mean that you have to be all happy and put your head in the sand. It's fully embracing to find out what it is. I mean, seriously, this is not easy to deal with. But in embracing something like the trauma or the reason for whatever, you are then getting control. And this two shall pass because you will reconceptualize it. But if you push it down, it doesn't go anywhere except there. And the more

you push it down, the more becomes a trigger for other things. And eventually this pervades and it's activating all kinds of new patterns of behavior. And then all of it just gets too much. And people feel like I can't do this. It's just so overwhelming. And so that's what I'm trying to help people get out of that state, that you actually can manage that. And it's a lifelong process. It's not five steps and boom, it's all gone away in one day. I'm talking about a lifestyle. Like you clean your teeth, you clean your house, you clean your kitchen after eating. You bathe every day. You mind manage every day because your mind never stops. You wake up with your mind. You go to bed with your mind. It's always going. So we need to manage it.

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on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash confidence to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash confidence. You do the five-step process every day. You're managing your mind every day. I love with it. It's a process that now as I've become, you know, over the years of being involved in neuroscience and developing this and working with so many people. I mean, I couldn't live without this. It's not that my life has now become this perfect rosy picture. Oh gosh, I still have the tears, the depression, the anxiety, the frustration, the irritation, the anger. But the difference is I recognize it immediately and I can manage it. So in the past, for you, example, I would get very upset if someone maybe said something on social media or in a business meeting or one of my colleagues or something, one of my kids or something, I would adult children. And it would affect the rest of the day. Like something in the morning would affect, it would permeate, and then I would ruminate on the stuff and I would get stuck, not anymore.

That doesn't happen. I'll still get the initial reaction, but I know what to do. I've learned to train myself to how to self-regul, how to recognize and how to manage it. so it's less and it's shorter. I had so much more mental peace. So I use it all the time. Every day I'm working on a big thing over cycles of 63 days and the big things are like you're established stuff,

like the traumas and those things. All of us have got them to different. Sometimes it's a massive one you're working on. It's just got so many feelers that it takes years to unpack in cycles of 63 days. And sometimes it's just you go through a season where you just really maybe very up, getting more reactive than normal.

And any pattern has got a root. Any way you show up, always has a root. whatever is above the ground has got a root. If you see anxiety, depression and our emotions and behaviors in that way, then instead of being fearful, and we can then do the thought detective to go and unwire them and rewire them in our brain. So yes, it's a lifestyle for me. So from the little times where maybe I get into an argument,

and there's one example. I give on my cleaning up the ankle mess podcast, going to Orange Theory with my daughter, of three of my adult kids work with me and my husband. And I would just work up out of sorts, and I didn't neuropsycho when I got up because I got up late. I rushed to the faster workout. I didn't prepare my mind, which is something that is really bad.

I knew all of that. So, yeah, I knew it all. By the time I got to Orange Theory, which was three minutes away, I got totally irritated with my daughter, and we got in an argument totally my fault because I hadn't a neuropsychic, but I recognised that by the time I got on my treadmill, and this is literally seven minutes later, I did the neuropsychel, calm down, caught my daughter's eye, and it was over. You know, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

And then, as I said, the big stuff. So you just become aware. You become not just aware, but you're aware and beyond. It's beyond mindfulness. We're not just talking mindfulness. That's only brain preparation. Mindfulness just takes you to like level preparation. It hasn't even entered the work yet and takes you that and beyond.

And the neuroscience actually shows, because I wanted to see, okay, well, what is mind, what is brain? And what are thoughts, what are emotions, what are memories? Because there's all these words we throw around. But what are they actually? Can you manage them? Do we have agency? And we do. We have total agency.

over our mind, and we can develop them as a skill. And that's so good to know. So you teach your kids from young. I mean, I've taught my kids from young. Their mind management skills, I wish I had this in my 20s, the level that they're at. I've trained them from young. So that doesn't mean that they don't have depression and anxiety.

They get it all. But they know what to do. That's the difference. So they don't just, I'm sad, I need, I've got clinical depression. I'm feeling sad because I'm feeling depressed. It's okay. We allow them to process their emotions.

So that's really. key to this whole thing because when you allow yourself to manage it, you don't get stuck, you don't just keep going round and round in circles, you actually manage the process. Does that make sense? Yes, it's so powerful. But Dr. Leif, it's like anything, you have to make it a new habit. And like you said, now teaching us that it's 63 days, you know, we always thought it was 21 or month that I'd heard many times. I had no idea. And you thought that if you did something for a month every day, that that would be enough. How did we get that bad information? Well, that's it. I've been, I've this in the book too. It was a plastic surgeon

years ago, I think in the 60s. And your body heals physically in cycles of three weeks. If you get a blister, it takes about three weeks for the immune system to do its thing in stem cells. And this plastic surgeon was talking something around those lines of physical healing takes these cycles of 21 days.

Thoughts are real. They're also physical. And I'll explain that in a moment. But it's not one cycle. It's multiple cycles when to change behavior. So if you're having such surgery, you're not going to be healed in 21 days. It's a three-week cycle. So if it's a major thing that's wrong with you,

you may have multiple cycles of three weeks before it's healed. If it's something like a little simple blister, it's about three weeks. And if you think of it, like if you have a muscle injury or something, you'll find depending on how bad it is, you will see distinct changes in healing in cycles of three weeks. So that's where the thing got distorted and got popular myth. Before you knew it, it was 21 days is likely key, but it's not because 21 days is enough to identify,

deconstruct and reconstruct, into a new thought. But it's going to be a tiny little thought with no, think of a plant that's just newly planted. It's really weak. It can so easily be crushed. That's what happens after three weeks. So you've done the bulk of the work. But to turn that, to give it enough energy, to water it every day, to give it enough energy, that's what you have to do with your thoughts.

So you have to work for at least another 42 days. And then you grow this. So it gets sufficient energy. Because everything's about energy in the brain and the mind. energy patterns and having enough energy for things to move into consciousness to influence behavior. So that's what I found in my clinical trials that the experimental group by day 63, the behavior change was occurring.

At day 21, there were hints of change mentally, or lots of change. We call it gamma plasticity, gamma peaks happening in the brain, which meant that they could say, I am depressed because of, I'm not depression. So it's major growth, but they're not applying it yet until day 63. at day 63. So between day 22 and 63, you'll start seeing little applications, but there's a consistency in behavior change

where your sleep's improving, when you're catching yourself much quicker in that certain reaction that you used to just like automatically fall into. That's the sort of thing. So it's 63 days to form a habit. And then cycles. Whenever it's a massive thing you're dealing with, like if you've had multiple traumas,

at whatever stage of your life, the bigger it is, the bigger the tree, the more cycles you potentially will need. Like a tree has roots, you're going to have roots to the story. What the current language of today is that the brain and the mind are the same thing. Most people think that the brain and the mind are the same thing. The words are used interchangeably. People will say my brain, my mind and they'll think it's, but it's not.

They're two totally different things. The brain is this physical organ and it's part of the physical body and it's 1% of who you are as a human, which is not much, very important, but it's only 1% of who you are. So what's the other 99%? your mind. So your mind is your aliveness. So that, as I said, the difference between you and I and a dead person is our mind. So on a psychological level, what your mind is, which is what you're doing at the moment, is you are listening and watching. And I'm giving you information, which is coming at you, as you're hearing words and seeing things, but it's electromagnetic light waves

and all this, this physics stuff and sound waves and auditory sound waves and gravitational for fields. So your mind is actually receiving that in that form and then converting it and pushing it through the brain. So look at it like this. So you and I are surrounded by a cloud and that cloud isn't there if you did. So this cloud not only is around your body, but it's also in your body. And when I say cloud, it's like to visualize something around the body because people say, what does it look like? There's an electromagnetic field and gravitational fields around your brain and your body and through your brain and your body. That's where we can measure the electrical, we can use an ECG on the heart because you're measuring

mind, moving through heart, you're measuring that life force. We can use a QEEG in the brain, which is what I use in my research, which is showing the energy from the mind and the brain. It's not there if you did. You know, we can track in the blood, electricity, in your blood. So everything is around you. If you walk past someone and you just brush past and you get that, oh, that electrostatic shock.

See, all of that shows that we have this field around us, and that's mind. Mind on a physics level is we can explain with things like quantum physics and gravitational fields and the electrostatic effect that Einstein spoke about. And we all have this. You have one, I can't have yours, you can't have mine, but we can enhance each other. That sense, that connection, thinking of someone and you, that's very much what mind is. It's this aliveness. So on a psychological level, we can call it the how you think and how you think.

you feel and how you choose. And on a physics level, it is this cloud, this gravitational field. Now, gravitational fields are very easy to understand because we would be floating if we didn't have gravity. So gravity, we're sitting in gravitational fields, but we also have a unique gravitational field around us. And that's how we interact. So that's basically your mind.

And it's around and through and it's fast and it's like never stops. Your brain and your body are limited in energy. They get tired. and that's what we have to sleep. And so our brain and body can regenerate because the mind pretty much exhausts the brain and the body because it's driving all this response to life. So you wake up in the morning and you process the events and circumstances of life. And that's about 8,000 to 10,000 things you're going to be experiencing in a day.

And all of those get processed into your brain and into your mind, into your brain as these trees. So these are made of protein. So literally what you're seeing and hearing now is being processed through this field, which is your thinking, feeling, choosing, and being pushed into your brain, your brain is responding electrically, electromagneticly, electronically, chemically and genetically, and building my words into trees. So right now you and the listeners are changing the structure of your brain,

which is neuroplasticity, the brain can change through the mind, in response to what I'm saying. So you've already changed your brain. Your brain has grown with branches. As a tree has got roots and branches, so do these thoughts have roots and branches. That's why I always use the tree analogy. They literally look like trees in the brain with thought. So you think, feel, and choose, and you build a thought.

The thought we are all building at the moment is the thought about mind, brain, mental health, cleaning up your mental mess, whatever you've called it. Like you have an apple tree and a fir tree, you have a name of a thought. So the name of the thought is mental health, let's say. And now, as I'm talking, all the information I'm giving you is the roots. It's the source. And then the tree trunk and the branches are all your interpretation of what I'm saying, which is unique for everyone.

So it's the same information that you're getting, but your interpretation will be completely different for each person. And that's very important. So it's that uniqueness in humanity that we see. Now, these roots and branches are memories. So there's another distinction. The brain is this thing in your head. The mind is this field around you and this aliveness and this think-field choose.

The mind thinks, feels and chooses in response to the experiences of life and builds thoughts. Thoughts of the trees. Trees are made of memories. It's like trees made of branches, thoughts on. made of memories. So these are the memories. So this one thought that we're building now of mental health has got, by the end of this discussion, you're going to have at least 2,000 routes, at least, because that's about as many facts, if not more. I've actually probably

given you, depending on how long we talk and how much information I give. It's up to 4,000, pieces of information I've given you. So that's in your route. And your interpretation will be over here. This is what you think, feel and choose about what you've heard. Now, this collectively is how you show up. So when you talk about this to maybe your friend or your partner, or whatever, your kids or whatever, you are going to be talking from your interpretation of this. So now you take this and then let's say you go read my book, you're going to grow more on there. So one thought can have thousands of memories.

And the memories are data and emotions because you think, feel and choose. So there's all these choices and these emotions and this data. So they're rich and massively like huge. And that's why they're overwhelming or they make yourself, you know, you know, recall something, it's got so much stuff in it. And it's great if it's healthy because that's what our brain and body are wired for. But let's now take the toxic version and look at the toxic roots. So here now, let's say that this is a multiple bullying boss who's just, I happen to get

someone who asked you that question just recently in the life. So it's actually very appropriate. Terrible trauma from a boss for years. They just couldn't get out of it because they needed the money. Everyone suffered from that particular boss. And it was with this particular person. and they had multiple experiences daily so that this roots just year after day after day,

week after week, month after month, year after year, built up so much toxicity and trauma. So that's the source, the roots, the experience. Then that was the interpretation, the tree trunks interpretation into the branches, which is then how they think, feel and choose about the situation. Works terrible. I'm not good enough.

Imposter syndrome, frustrated. I have to people please, whatever. I mean, it's like I'm useless. I'm not really good enough. I hate this. I'm so unhappy. And that will show up in your life as in patterns of depression, anxiety, overwhelm, frustration, anger. It will come out in your relationships because this isn't isolated to the work environment.

It's going to pour over into relationships at home immediately. It's going to hit your friendships. It's going to hit your time that you spend on yourself to do self-care because this is just consuming. So that has to be dealt with. That you can't get rid of this with a drug, an antipsychotic or an antidepressant. or a combination or anti-anxiety made, maybe for a while you'll have a bit of temporary relief because those are basically anaesthetics and so they just numb your brain and they're psychoactive. So they do this numbing psychoactive thing in your brain.

But that's not very good for your brain long term. Short term, you know, like for maybe a very short term, it may get you through like a few moments or a few days. But this shouldn't be, I'll be talking days. These things shouldn't be taken for weeks. They're not chronic medications. They shouldn't be taken for weeks on end. And all the research shows that, but people are innocently not knowing, and the doctors

are giving them this stuff, and they trust because the doctors don't know what's going on. You know, because the scientists are presenting the information, the drug companies. And I mean, I don't want to go into like a whole conspiracy theory because this isn't conspiracy. This is pure science. There are thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of articles, if not hundreds of thousands. Scientific journal articles published explaining how these drugs are not the answer. they're damaging the brain.

They're not any more effective than placebo, which means no drug. Pacebo means that you didn't get the drug. In fact, they cause more long-term effects. They have an initial temporary effect because they make you feel okay. And generally the drug trials are only about three to six weeks, on average about six weeks, which is definitely not enough time to, you mean, after the big stuff happens after that. And then they say, oh, look, they were so much more effective. But if you analyze the statistics, they weren't more effective than the placebo.

They've been cooking the box. So there's a massive outcry in the scientific world about this. And there's a huge, and it's going to change because good science will win because truth always does eventually win over. And there's such a noise happening now that it will spill over into the public arena. But in the meantime, I don't want people suffering if they don't have to. That's why I'm trying to bring this message through. So essentially what we need to do is recognize if I'm showing up with repeated depression or high levels of anxiety or complete burnout and overwhelm. First of all, say to yourself, it's okay.

There's a reason. Embrace it. Don't be frightened of it. see it as a helpful messenger, and that in itself creates the most phenomenal change in your body. If you're showing up with anxiety and depression and thinking, this is terrible, like the example you gave, like this is so bad, must I see someone? Is there something wrong with me? You know all that fear that went with that?

As you experienced that 1400 neurophysiological responses in your body would have worked against you and said it for you, you would have created a vulnerability in your body that would have increased your vulnerability to getting any kind of disease by 35 to 98%. Now, I don't know which disease, I don't know what level of vulnerability. All I know is that if we are not designed for that, it threatens our survival. So any unmanaged toxicity, whether it's a virus, like the COVID virus, or whether it's a toxic thought, because the brain doesn't distinguish between a COVID virus, for example, and a toxic trauma. There are physical structures in the brain and the body.

Sure, the COVID virus looks different to this, but it's something. a toxic invasion. The brain isn't built for this. These proteins are all distorted and the chemical imbalance. So we're wired for survival. So here now our brain and our body's immune system is saying, threat, let's send out the T lymphocytes and the B lymphocytes and the macrophages. Now there's inflammation. But you're not dealing with us. So the inflammation gets worse. And then you have autoimmune. And then it cascades into your heart and your body. And then people wonder why they are getting all these lifestyle diseases that I mentioned in the beginning. and people are dying younger because we're not teaching people how to create environments in their brain and their body that are managed.

So here now, let's take that situation that you were in and now you say, okay, well, yeah, geez, it's reasonable. I mean, it's okay to feel depression and anxiety. I've had X, Y, Z, this isolation is driving me crazy. I'm stuck at home. This and this and this. So this is a normal response. So as soon as you do that, instead of those 1,400 neurophysiological responses working against you, they work for you. You would immediately have more blood pumping from your heart because the blood vessels around your heart will dilate.

And you'll have more blood flow and oxygen flowing to your brain. Immediately your cognitive flexibility changes. Your impulsivity drops, your ability to be more creative increases. All the things you need to manage any situation, we need all those kind of skills. I started breathing deeper when I just heard you say that, Dr. Leap. I mean, that just gave me a sense of calm just immediately. There you go. It's an immediate change.

So now you haven't even fixed us yet. but because you've actually made the decision to see this as a helpful messenger and you're mentally starting to prepare yourself that, okay, this is going to be hard work. I'm still going to cry. I'm still going to feel depressed, but I'm going to find out why and I'm going to make it work for me and not against me. When you want more, start your business with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free guides, tools and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business. All in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest today. Northwest Registered Agents has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They are the largest registered agent and LLC service in the U.S. With over 1,500 corporate guides, real people who know your local laws and can help you in your business every step of the way.

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And that's how brilliant we are. We can be a thought to take to We can go from the emotional and physical and behavioral warning signals right down to the root and change it around. Now, we know that your initial feeling there was something to do with COVID. So we kind of know the root. We know that this is depression from COVID. But immediately people are thinking, okay, is it an illness in my brain? No, it's not an illness. You need to go and really process what's happened.

You need to go and grab your emotional warning signals, your physical warning signals, the behavioral warning signals. And what are they? and gather those and the perspective warning signals and then work through a process of unpacking why you have those and what could you do about them? What's the antidote? What's the solution? And you're not going to find it in one day. You're going to take at least 21 days to do that, to deconstruct and reconstruct the process. And once you've done that, it doesn't mean that you're going to cope beautifully in that situation. It means you've got a baby tree. Now you have to practice applying that on a day-to-day basis. So you've got to really practice like that little

tree is tiny. To do that deconstruction, reconstruction process from day 1 to 21, you use the neuropsychel, which is five steps every day for about 15 to 45 minutes. It's not much work. You can do less than 15 minutes. The heavier the problem, the more time you take, but you never go beyond

45 minutes, and you do that for 21 days. So that's where the 21 days comes in the three weeks. It's the first part, and you'll end up taking the energy from this and getting this, but it's tiny. Then from day 22 to be 63, you just do step you're just going to do the fifth step, one step.

You do the last step number five. And just to keep it in your conscious awareness. But at that point, you want to do that because you want to be practicing, using it in your life. So it's basically a way of keeping it conscious, giving it enough energy. Because all your thoughts in your brain, you've got trillions. You don't have two. You have trillions. Mostly green, mostly healthy.

But these are all our tough experiences. The big torments, the little torments and the bad habits and toxic habits and things we just haven't dealt with. mostly it's these. So when we start dealing with these, they're trillions and trillions of these. So there's a lot of competition. Whatever you think about the most, whatever you pay the most attention to, has the most energy. So that's what's going to pop from what we call our non-conscious mind where all these trees, imagine a mass of forest that just goes on forever and ever and ever.

That's what our minds look like. That's what the brain and the mind look like. So if you don't grow this thing, this thing will come back or something else that you haven't dealt with will overtake this. And this will just sit there weak and small and not impact your behavior. And that's why people feel stuck. They do the work or do a certain amount of work. And they know they've done it.

Like you'll have people saying, I know what to do. Yes, here it is. But I don't know how to apply it because you haven't gone long enough. It's very systematic. And it's not your fault. No one taught you. Who's teaching this stuff? We're getting told, drink green juices, go workout at the gym.

I mean, I'm being facetious now. And I do all of that. I do my fastest workouts. I eat clean food. I do the whole thing. But all of that's driven by mind. And just the other day, I was doing. alive and I actually explain to people that if I go do my workout and I want to just get it

over and done with, I'm going to lose up to 80% of the benefit of the workout. Why? Because it's driven by mind. My ability of my body to benefit from going to orange cereal, going to hot yoga or eating that clean meal is controlled by my mind. My mind controls my digestive system, all of it. So if you're eating that clean food, but you're sitting there totally in that overwhelmed state from work and not managing it. I'm not saying solving it. Listen to what I'm saying, managing it. So you're going through the process because you're always going to be going through the process. But just the mere fact that you are actually embracing processing and reconceptualizing

and in that process, you then can digest the food. If not, you're going to lose up to 80% of that nutrition. For example, the pancreas is a huge part of assimilating nutrients from food. It plays a huge role. And if you are totally toxic and stressed or not managing your mind, let's put not managing your mind, it's much less threatening. those 20 different neuropeptides that your pancreas needs to secrete for you to assimilate the nutrition

from that great tea meal that you're eating, they're not going to work. So you're just not going to get that same assimilation. It's not enough. It's not enough. The wellness movement is fantastic because it's made us aware and it's teaching us more autonomy

and I'm totally for it. But I'm very concerned about it too and I talk about that in the book because it kind of is, well, you haven't drunk enough green juices or you haven't done enough affirmations or you haven't done, then it's all about you again.

then you've broken. We're all a mess. But it's not because I haven't tried some extrinsic thing. It's because I'm actually a human experiencing life and I need help managing. It's so much less definitive. It's not, and I guess it is five steps. And the neuropsychel is five steps. But it's not a technique. It's a system to get your self-regulation skills to the point where you can self-regulate literally every 10 seconds. That's what the science shows. When you're awake, you can literally self-regulate yourself every 10 seconds. And that's what the your cycle trains you to do. It trains you to be so self-regulated that you can watch yourself write that email and you can correct your reactions. You can watch yourself in that argument and you can

pull back and you can self-correct. You can watch yourself in that argument and not self-correct and get angry and mad and you can watch yourself going downhill and you can bring yourself back. So in other words, it's this constant self-regulation which we're not teaching. We've become so reactive, but we actually responders. We're not reacters. Humans are not reactors. Humans are not reactors. we responders. But if you don't train that skill, you become a reactor. And that's when the decisions become the wrong decisions and the results are toxic. And then you get that spiral happening.

And so when I talk about the 81%, this is what I'm talking about. When you mind managed, this is what you're doing. It's realistic. When you're sad, you're not frightened. You understand it because there's a reason. So you give yourself the grace to embrace it, to see it as a helpful messenger. It's so much better than thinking, oh, I feel sad again. I feel so guilty.

Now I've got guilt, shame and sadness. and then people are irritated because you're not irritated at yourself. So you're guilty, shame, sadness, and you're irritable. And then everyone's irritable back and now you're arguing. I mean, it just goes no way. I'm exaggerating. But I mean, sometimes that's the case. No, but we see that.

It's like a vicious cycle that you see happen with one thing goes wrong and then you start getting negative and then you bump into somebody else and then you yell at them. It just takes off from there. It does. And then we do things. You all do things. You all say things we regret. people do things we regret. I mean, I'm a mom of four and I think I'm a great parent,

but I know that I've created a torment in my kid's life, like my mother did in mind. Like every mother, there's no mother, there's no father that hasn't unintentionally done something or said something because it's come through. And here we sit beating ourselves to death as parents thinking, but you can't do anything if you're guilty because guilty will hold you back and you'll react and correctly to your child. So own the guilt and say, okay, I feel really bad about this, but I'm not going to make that guilt work for me. I'm not going to sit there in the guilt and think, how am I going to, I did this too? You said, okay, this was terrible. Let me hear it. I'm sorry, what did it do? Okay, now let's fix this. How can we fix

this together? So you hear it. You help your child process through that pain. So you can't change it, but you can't change what you did in the past because it's finished, but you can change the impact. You can change how you wanted to play out into the future. That's not what we've been taught. So people are going into adulthood and then they're kind of blaming their parents and where's it going to end because they're going to blame their parents. You can't play the blame game. You can't play the victim card. And we are.

We can talk to be victims. We're not victims. We're survivors. And I even say that with someone who's gone through sexual abuse, if you see yourself as a victim, it will keep you chained. And I'm not saying that what happened was right. Don't get me wrong. That was horrific.

And those people deserve to be castrated and whatever. Whoever hurt you. I mean, I can be really strong words about that. But what I'm saying is that if you see yourself as the victim, you stay connected to your victim. that if you see yourself as I've survived that. That was wrong. That was so, so wrong. But I've survived that. You've reconceptualized it because now you own it. They do not own you. They are the prisoners, not you anymore. Wow. That is so powerful, Dr. Leap. I love that and so empowering. You see, we've got agency. That's why I talk about the pathway to empowerment. It's being able to look at that and say,

you know, that person did that to me. That child was abused by that parent or that child, that boss, bullied that person. But if you see yourself as a victim of that boss, they are still controlling you. But if you see yourself as, okay, I've survived that. I actually got, I'm broken from it. I'm shattered. I mean, all over the floor in pieces and I'm depressed as heck and anxious

and life sucks and I hate life. But I am not a victim. I survived it. So now I'm going to build the pieces together. I'm going to rebuild my life. That's the shift. When you make that choice, people often ask me, because I work so much with trauma.

I work with war trauma. People in Rwanda after the genocide. I've worked in apartheid South Africa for years through the whole apartheid trauma, I work with sex traffic victims, etc. And I've worked with people with severe damage, like traumatic brain injuries and all that stuff, which has always got the emotional component.

And people always say, what is the key? And even in my own life, if I think of my own life as well, the key to where people make that shift when people realize that they have agency. And agency means I actually can choose to decide what I want to do with that. that. And I choose to see that anxiety not as some brain disease or I see that as a signal telling me about this. And then you use that to find this to your thought detective work,

which is the neuropsychol. And then you see, okay, well, I survived that versus, and then that person, because we're not wired to do this kind. People are not wired to hurt each other. We're wired for love. That's survival. Our whole brain and body is actually wired for love. The optimism bias, which everyone's heard about and people have heard about the negativity bias. There's a very, very, very wrong teaching. out there in the media and in common sort of language that we're drawn to negative. Humans are drawn to the negative, as though we're negative

or toxic or evil. No, we are not. We're wired for love. There isn't a single protein or structure that builds back as a cell structure, organ, energy wave that is designed for toxicity, because all of that threat and survival. The minute you have toxicity in your body,

you've changed the environment and you're in threat to survival mode. So we be designed for survival. So we're not drawn to the negative because we are evil, because that will wreck us, we're drawn to the negative because it's created an imbalance. We're drawn to to fix it. Totally different perspective. You see, so that's why I say, when you see yourself as a survivor,

you're taking the balance, the imbalance out, and you're taking agency back. And yes, you're going to have years of work to work on that trauma, but that's what you can do. You can then work, you can choose to take how you want that to play out into your future. So that's the sort of thinking that I'm trying to teach in the book. And it's very practical. I mean, sides there, but it's also very, very how-to in the book.

It is. It's very how-to. You give great examples. Where can everyone find cleaning up your mental mess? Wherever books are sold, they can get it. And then also it'll be on our site, like in the next 24 hours of we'll put on site. But wherever books are sold and they can find out anything they want about what I do, Dr. Caroline Leif, which all my social media handles.

And our web pages, Dr.leaf.com. And my podcast is also called cleaning up the mental mess. Oh my gosh, your information is so helpful, so empowering and so practical. And I just want to say thank you for all the work that you're doing to help everyone. And it comes through so clear how passionate you are and all the good you're doing. I appreciate you so much. Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate your support and understanding and getting the message.

It's so hopeful that we can actually process all this together, you know, not just get stuck in a box and pushed in a corner that humans can connect. And we can really go through our stuff and not feel guilty about it. Oh, it's such a beautiful thing. That is the wonderful thing about this time right now. Thank goodness for the technology and the power that is put in people's hands. So I'm super, super grateful for you. I will include all the links in the show notes. And thank you so much, Dr. Lee, wishing you the best and hoping everybody picks up this book because everyone needs it.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. It was so lovely meeting you. Thank you. Thank you for your great questions. Thank you.